Posted: August 30, 2016 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Guns and Gadgets, Health and Social Issues, Politics, Self Defense | Tags: Barack Obama, Brady Campaign, Civil Rights, Concealed carry in the United States, Democratic Party (United States), Everytown for Gun Safety, Gun, Gun control, Gun rights, Gun safety, John Lott, Students for Concealed Carry, The Daily Signal, University of Texas at Austin, University of Texas at Dallas |

‘Real feminism is about empowerment and taking our safety into our own hands,’ Dallas gun owner Antonia Okafor says.
Fred Lucas reports: Antonia Okafor, a Dallas resident, says she believes a gun can be the great equalizer for women to defend themselves—one reason she is now the southwest regional director for a group called Students for Concealed Carry.
“A lot of minority homes didn’t have father figures growing up. The right to bear arms is a way to protect our community. Every weekend people are dying in cities riddled with gun control.”
State laws allowing residents to carry concealed weapons have been enacted in all 50 states, with varying
degrees of regulation—most recently on college campuses.
[Check out Emily Miller’s book “Emily Gets Her Gun” from Amazon]
“We see ourselves as doing this as a means of empowerment,” Okafor, 26, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “Real feminism is about empowerment and taking our safety into our own hands.”
[Read the full story here, at dailysignal.com]
Okafor, who is black, said more female role models, such as Olympic gold medalist Kim Rhode, have inspired more gun ownership among women.
But Okafor—a graduate of the University of Texas at Dallas, where she became involved in the movement—said her mother is opposed to guns.
In an April poll by ABC News of issues millennial women are most concerned about, gun rights scored even with equal pay and abortion, each getting 11 percent.

A study by the Crime Prevention Research Center earlier this month found concealed-carry permits have boomed nationally, but particularly among women and minorities. “In eight states where we have data by
gender, since 2012 the number of permits has increased by 161 percent for women and by 85 percent for men,” the report says.
[See John R. Lott’s More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, Third Edition (Studies in Law and Economics) at Amazon]
From 2007 through 2015, concealed-carry permits issued by state and local governments increased about 75 percent faster among nonwhites than whites, according to the report.
Okafor noted that those living in the inner city “are the most likely to benefit” from self-defense. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: August 19, 2016 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Guns and Gadgets, Law & Justice, Politics, Self Defense | Tags: Barack Obama, Brady Campaign, Concealed carry in the United States, Concealed Carry Permit Holders, Crime prevention, Florida, Gun, Gun laws, Investigation, John Lott, Research, Texas, United States, Violent crime |


Cortney O’Brien reports: “Indeed, it is impossible to think of any other group in the U.S. that is anywhere near as law-abiding” as concealed carry permit holders. So concluded the Crime Prevention Research Center following its new report, “Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States 2016.”
“With about 685,464 full-time police officers in the U.S. from 2005 to 2007, we find that there were about 103 crimes per hundred thousand officers. For the U.S. population as a whole, the crime rate was 37 times higher—3,813 per hundred thousand people.”
The center studied the rate of criminal offenses among concealed carry holders in Florida and Texas when coming to its conclusion.
The findings speak for themselves. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: October 24, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Guns and Gadgets, Politics, Self Defense, U.S. News | Tags: Background check, Barack Obama, Civil liberties, Concealed carry in the United States, Democratic Party (United States), Elizabeth Esty, Federal government of the United States, Gallup (company), Gun control, Gun politics, Gun safety, John Lott, More Guns Less Crime, Republican Party (United States) |

A Gallup poll released on October 20 shows that a majority of Americans believe more concealed carry equals less crime.
AWR Hawkins reports: According to Gallup, 56 percent of Americans answered in the affirmative when asked if the U.S. would be safer if “more Americans were allowed to carry concealed weapons if they
passed a criminal background check and training course.” 41 percent of respondents said more concealed carry would make the country less safe.
[Order John R. Lott’s More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws at Amazon]
In a pattern that has become very familiar, support for more concealed carry was driven by Republicans and independents. Eighty-two percent of Republicans believe more concealed carry would make the U.S. safer and 56 percent of independents agree. But the majority of Democrats—67 percent—believe more concealed carry would make the U.S. less safe.
On October 21, Breitbart News reported a very similar breakdown by party in a CNN/ORC that looked at Americans’ overarching position on gun control. In that poll, 52 percent of Americans opposed more gun control, while 46 percent support the passage of more gun laws….(read more)

Source: Breitbart
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
Posted: September 8, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Guns and Gadgets, Self Defense, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Americans for Responsible Solutions, Background check, Brady Campaign, Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, Civil Rights, Democratic Party (United States), Federal Firearms License, Glock, Gun control, Gun rights, Hillary Clinton, John Lott, National Instant Criminal Background Check System, National Shooting Sports Foundation, Second Amendment |

New record: the most checks ever performed in any August since the creation of the National Instant Background Check System.
Stephen Gutowski reports: Gun sales were at an all-time high in June, July, and August, according
to one metric.
[See John R. Lott’s More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, Third Edition (Studies in Law and Economics) at Amazon]
This August saw 1.7 million background checks performed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives on new gun sales, the most checks ever performed in any August since the creation of the National Instant Background Check System.

“Whenever there is a call for gun control, sales increase. Unfortunately, this is a pattern that repeats itself.”
— Larry Keane
[Order Emily Miller’s book “Emily Gets Her Gun” from Amazon]
The agency performed 1.6 million checks in July, the high for that month. They did a further 1.5 million in June, another all-time high. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: August 31, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Guns and Gadgets, Law & Justice, Self Defense, U.S. News | Tags: AWR Hawkins, breitbart, Charleston SC, Chattanooga, Concealed carry in the United States, Congressional Research Service, Congressional Research Service reports, Firearm, Firearms and Explosives, Gun politics, Gun violence, John Lott, Less Crime, Mass murder, More Guns, National Rifle Association, Violence Policy Center |

On August 28, the NRA presented ATF and FBI data showing Americans have purchased “170 million new guns”
since 1991, and violent crime has fallen “51 percent.”
[Order Emily Miller’s book “Emily Gets Her Gun” from Amazon]
AWR Hawkins reports: The NRA tweeted, “Since ’91, Americans have acquired over 170 million new firearms and violent crimes have declined by 51%.”
“The overarching message is simple—more guns, less crime. Americans have purchased “170 million new guns” since 1991, and violent crime has decreased as gun ownership has increased.”
This information squares with the findings of a Congressional Research Service (CRS) study covering the slightly shorter period of time
from 1994 to 2009.
[Order John R. Lott’s essential book “More Guns, Less Crime” at Amazon]
For those years, CRS found that Americans purchased approximately 118 million firearms, and the 1993 “firearm-related murder and non-negligent homicide” rate of 6.6 per 100,000 fell to 3.6 per 100,000 by the year 2000. It eventually fell all the way to 3.2 per 100,000 in 2011.
That is more than a 50 percent reduction in “firearm-related murder and non-negligent homicide.”

Then, in 2009—the year the CRS study ended…(read more)
[Order Nicholas Johnson’s book “Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms” at Amazon]
Source: Breitbart
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
It’s not like this hasn’t been documented multiple times. Here are just a few examples of our coverage of the gun rights/gun control debate, civil rights, and crime statistics, followed by external links.

More Guns, Less Crime at punditfromanotherplanet.com
Rinse, Repeat: FBI Report Shows Violent Crime Decreased as Gun Sales Increased
Charleston Shooting Prompts Gun-Rights Supporters to Call for More Concealed-Carry at Churches
Want Fewer Guns on California Streets? Open Carry May Be the Answer
Editorial: Americans Seem to Embrace Idea of More Guns, Less Crime
Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons: Guns Do Not Cause Crime
The Helpless, Pro-Death “Gun-Free Zone” Policy in the Spotlight
NYC Stop-and-Frisk Plunges as Crime Climbs
Virginia: Gun Sales Rise, Crime Falls
The list goes on and on….
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: June 23, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Religion, Self Defense, U.S. News | Tags: 2007 Colorado YWAM and New Life shootings, Alabama, Assam, Barack Obama, Civil Rights, Colorado, Colorado Springs, Concealed carry in the United States, Emanuel AME Church (Mobile, Gun politics in the United States, John Lott, Matthew Murray, New Life Church (Colorado Springs, Security guard, Self-defense, South Carolina |
Valerie Richardson writes: He was a young gunman bent on shooting as many worshippers as possible, but
Matthew J. Murray never got as far as Dylann Roof, the suspect in Wednesday’s South Carolina church massacre.

“At a time when religion is under attack and we have the government every day running God out of the public square, churches have become the targets of opportunity for deranged people. Particularly if they assume that folks are not armed.”
— Kenneth Blackwell
Posted: June 10, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Law & Justice, Politics, Self Defense, White House | Tags: ACJS Today, Barack Obama, Crime Prevention Research Center, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Guns, Illinois Republican Party, J. Pete Blair, Jason L. Riley, John Lott, M. Hunter Martaindale, Manhattan Institute |

Before the 2014 election, the FBI claimed that mass shootings were up. False.
Jason L. Riley writes: Last September the Obama administration produced an FBI report that said mass shooting attacks and deaths were up sharply—by an average annual rate of about 16% between 2000 and 2013. Moreover, the problem was worsening. “The findings establish an increasing frequency of incidents,” said the authors. “During the first 7 years included in the study, an average of 6.4 incidents occurred annually. In the last 7 years of the study, that average increased to 16.4 incidents annually.”
The White House could not possibly have been more pleased with the media reaction to these findings, which were prominently featured by the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, the Washington Post and other major outlets. The FBI report landed six weeks before the midterm elections, and the administration was hoping that the gun-control issue would help drive Democratic turnout.

But late last week, J. Pete Blair and M. Hunter Martaindale, two academics at Texas State University who co-authored the FBI report, acknowledged that “our data is imperfect.” They said that the news media “got it wrong” last year when they “mistakenly reported mass shootings were on the rise.”
[Read the full text here, at WSJ]
Mind you, the authors did not issue this mea culpa in the major news outlets that supposedly misreported the original findings. Instead, the authors published it in ACJS Today, an academic journal published by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. “Because official data did not contain the information we needed, we had to develop our own,” wrote Messrs. Blair and Martaindale. “This required choices between various options with various strengths and weaknesses.” You don’t say. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: October 26, 2014 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Guns and Gadgets, Health and Social Issues, Self Defense | Tags: #blackopencarry, A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, African American, Black Panthers, Charles Cooke, Civil Rights, Emily Gets Her Gun, Frederick Douglass, Gun Control Act of 1968, Gun rights, Ida B. Wells, John Lott, Malcom X, Martin Luther King, Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms |

For centuries, firearms have been indispensable to black liberation: as crucial a defense against tyranny for Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. as for Sam Adams and George Washington.
For the New York Times, Charles W. Cooke writes: Conventional wisdom holds that firearms are the preserve of conservative white men. You would never know this at my local shooting range, which
happens to be in a majority African-American area, and has a clientele that reflects that fact. There, as a white man, I’m often in the minority; just one more guy who likes to fire weapons — another person to chat to and share stories with. It is, I’d venture, how things should be.
[Check out Nicholas Johnson’s book “Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms” at Amazon
]
By rights, the Second Amendment should serve as a totem of African-Americans’ full citizenship and enfranchisement.

“A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”
— Ida B. Wells
[Order Emily Miller’s book “Emily Gets Her Gun” from Amazon]
For centuries, firearms have been indispensable to black liberation: as crucial a defense against tyranny for Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. as for Sam Adams and George Washington. Today, however, many black Americans have a decidedly mixed relationship with the right to bear arms.
The first major ban on the open carrying of firearms — a Republican-led bill that was drafted after Black Panthers began hanging around the State Legislature in Sacramento with their guns on display — was signed in 1967 by none other than Gov. Ronald Reagan of California.


In August, as the outrage over the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., dominated the news, an African-American group calling itself the Huey P. Newton Gun Club took to the streets of Dallas, rifles in hand, to protest.
[Order the book “This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible” from Amazon]


Huey P. Newton Gun Club, demonstrating in Dallas, Texas
Local businesses were supportive, and the city’s police chief confirmed in a statement that his department “supports the constitutional rights of all.” On Twitter, the hashtag #blackopencarry prompted a warm
response from conservatives.
[Order John Lott’s famous book “More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws”, Third Edition (Studies in Law and Economics) from Amazon]
The federal Gun Control Act of 1968 was primarily a reaction to the scourge of “Saturday night specials” — cheap handguns owned by the poor and the black. The National Rifle Association opposed neither law.

Until around 1970, the aims of America’s firearms restrictionists and the aims of America’s racists were practically inextricable. In both the colonial and immediate post-Revolutionary periods, the first laws regulating gun ownership were aimed squarely at blacks and Native Americans.
And yet, that same month, a 22-year-old black man named John Crawford III was shot dead by the police in
an Ohio Walmart after a white customer claimed excitedly that a man was pointing a gun at his fellow patrons.
[Order the book “A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State” from Amazon
]
Later, the store’s security footage revealed that Mr. Crawford had been holding a BB gun that he had picked up in the sporting goods department, and that the caller’s testimony had been wrong. Ohio is an open carry state. That didn’t make much difference for Mr. Crawford.
“Malcolm X may have a deservedly mixed reputation, but the famous photograph of him standing at the window, rifle in hand, insisting on black liberation ‘by any means necessary,’ is about as American as it gets.”
Until around 1970, the aims of America’s firearms restrictionists and the aims of America’s racists were practically inextricable. In both the colonial and immediate post-Revolutionary periods, the first laws regulating gun ownership were aimed squarely at blacks and Native Americans. In both the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies, it was illegal for the colonists to sell guns to natives, while Virginia and Tennessee banned gun ownership by free blacks.
In the antebellum period, the chief justice of the United States, Roger B. Taney, wrote a grave warning into the heart of the execrable Dred Scott decision. If blacks were permitted to become citizens, Taney cautioned, they, like whites, would have full liberty to “keep and carry arms wherever they went.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: July 11, 2014 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Science & Technology, Self Defense, Think Tank, U.S. News | Tags: Concealed carry in the United States, Crime, Illinois, John Lott, Lott, South Dakota, Violent crime |

A dramatic spike in the number of Americans with permits to carry concealed weapons coincides with an equally stark drop in violent crime, according to a new study, which Second Amendment advocates say makes the case that more guns can mean safer streets.
“When you allow people to carry concealed handguns, you see changes in the behavior of criminals.”
– John R. Lott, Crime Prevention Research Center
The study by the Crime Prevention Research Center found that 11.1 million Americans now have permits to carry concealed weapons, up from 4.5 million in 2007. The 146 percent increase has come even as both murder and violent crime rates have dropped by 22 percent.
Six states don’t require a permit for legal gun owners to conceal their weapons, and Lott notes those states have some of the lowest violent crime rates in the nation.
“When you allow people to carry concealed handguns, you see changes in the behavior of criminals,” said the center’s president, John R. Lott, a Fox News contributor. “Some criminals stop committing crimes, others move on to crimes in which they don’t come into contact with victims and others actually move to areas where they have less fear of being confronted by armed victims.”
Increasing gun ownership, litigation and new state laws have all contributed to the rise in concealed carry permits. In March, Illinois became the 50th state to begin issuing concealed weapons permits. But the cost and other requirements for obtaining the permits varies greatly, from South Dakota, where a permit requires $10, a background check and no training, to Illinois, where the cost of obtaining a permit comes to more than $600 when the fee and cost of training programs are taken into account. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 15, 2014 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Law & Justice, Self Defense, Think Tank | Tags: Ammunition, Arms sales, Bill of Rights, Chicago City Council, Firearm, John Lott, Second Amendment, Second Amendment to the United States Constitution |

Defending the right to sell and trade arms
David B. Kopel writes: The First Amendment protects both book buyers and booksellers. Does the Second Amendment protect only people who buy guns, or does it also protect people who sell guns? Though this question has divided the federal courts, the answer is quite clear: operating a business that provides Second Amendment services is protected by the Second Amendment. District of Columbia v. Heller1 teaches that regulation of how firearms are commercially sold enjoys a presumption of constitutionality, which does not extend to prohibitions of firearms sales.
[Related: Find John Lott’s essential book: More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, Third Edition (Studies in Law and Economics)
at Amazon]
In the lower federal courts, there is a developing split about whether firearms sellers have Second Amendment rights which the courts are bound to respect. Seventh Circuit courts view firearms sellers like booksellers — as holders of constitutional rights. While gun sellers are subject to much stricter regulation than are booksellers, they are both protected by the Bill of Rights. Conversely, in the courts of the Fourth Circuit, gun sellers have no Second Amendment rights.

bitchesandbullets.tumblr.com
Brown v. Board of Education was not exactly a popular decision among some state and local governments, and among some lower court judges. The same is true of Heller. One form of resistance to Heller has been to read the opinion in the narrowest possible way, excluding from Second Amendment protection many normal activities involving firearms. One such form of resistance is the claim that the Second Amendment does not apply to gun sales.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: March 11, 2014 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Guns and Gadgets, Self Defense | Tags: Blaxploitation, Dolemite, Foxy Brown, Gun control, John Lott, Miami Vice, Pam Grier, United States, University of Chicago |

In Hollywood, and Real Life
Speaking of Girl Power…
For Daily Surge, Trish Willams writes:
Once upon a time, when I was a young teenager, I wanted to have a career in law enforcement.
Specifically, I wanted to be a Vice cop. Even more specifically, my mother freaked out telling me such things as, “Women shouldn’t be cops! What if you get shot? Why do you play those shooting video games so much?”
My desire to be a cop took a backseat to becoming an engineer but the image of what a firearm in the hands of a woman meant to me never went away.
[Order John Lott’s essential book “More Guns, Less Crime” from Amazon]
Growing up as a kid in the late 70′s, I got a steady dose of such Blaxploitation films as Shaft, Dolemite, and the movie that would change my life forever: Foxy Brown. Pam Grier’s character in Foxy Brown instilled in me, at a young age, that while violence against women was not inevitable, a firearm proved to be an equalizer when the brute strength of a male perpetrator was used against you.
[Miami Vice: The Complete Series at Amazon]
It also proved to be quite the crime deterrent. Fast forward to the slick ’80s. The female cop duo of Trudy Valentine and Gina Calabrese in Miami Vice further impressed on me that whether in the bright lights of the “normal” world or the grittiness of the underworld of drugs and prostitution, a firearm is the difference between protecting oneself and wearing a toe tag on a coroner’s table.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 20, 2014 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Self Defense, U.S. News | Tags: Background check, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, John Lott, More Guns Less Crime, Negligent homicide, Percentage, Rape, Twitter, United Press International, Violent crime |

Violent crime fell during the first six months of 2013–at the same time the number of gun purchases was expanding.
AWRHawkins reports: According to preliminary FBI stats, “All offenses in the category of violent crime” fell during the first six months of 2013, compared to the same time period in 2012.
John R. Lott demonstrated this conclusively, back in 1990s, in his highly-regarded book: “More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, Third Edition” (Studies in Law and Economics) order it from Amazon
UPI reports that this included “murder, non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, [and] aggravated assault and robbery.” Specifically, “murders declined by 6.9 percent, forcible rapes declined 10.6 percent, aggravated assaults decreased 6.6 percent and robbery offenses were down by 1.8 percent.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: January 31, 2014 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Self Defense, U.S. News | Tags: CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Death, Gun control, John Lott, Mortality rate, Twitter |

AWRHawkins reports: According to the 2010 Death and Mortality numbers released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more children under the age of ten are unintentionally killed in fire or water-related incidents than are killed in accidental gun deaths.
Gun scholar John Lott pulled together various CDC tables showing that thirty-six children under the age of ten were killed in firearm-related accidents in 2010.
The number of children under the age of ten killed in “unintentional fire/burn deaths” was 262, and the number killed in “unintentional drowning” incidents was 609.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 24, 2013 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Self Defense, U.S. News | Tags: Assault weapon, Concealed carry in the United States, Fixed effects model, Gun control, John Lott, List of countries by intentional homicide rate, murder, Quinnipiac University |

Flashbang bra for Christmas? ArmedinHeels
Ronald Bailey reports: Quinnipiac University economist Mark Gius has published a new study, “An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates,” in the journal Applied Economics Letters. From the abstract:
The purpose of the present study is to determine the effects of state-level assault weapons bans and concealed weapons laws on state-level murder rates. Using data for the period 1980 to 2009 and controlling for state and year fixed effects, the results of the present study suggest that states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murder rates than other states. It was also found that assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level. These results suggest that restrictive concealed weapons laws may cause an increase in gun-related murders at the state level. The results of this study are consistent with some prior research in this area, most notably Lott and Mustard (1997).
Intriguing.
For more background: The most recent Reason-Rupe poll reports that 63 percent of Americans don’t believe that stricter gun laws would keep weapons out of the hands of criminals.
Hit & Run : Reason.com
Posted: November 6, 2013 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Global, Self Defense | Tags: Arms Trade Treaty, Gun, Gun control, John Lott, List of countries by intentional homicide rate, More Guns Less Crime, Number of guns per capita by country, United States |

Awr Hawkins writes: Since 1998, John Lott‘s seminal work More Guns, Less Crime has been used to show that areas with the highest gun ownership in America experience the least crime on a per capita basis.
It now appears that what Lott discovered as true for the U.S.A. is true for the world as well as.
: see maps